Bad taste

It left a rather bad taste in my mouth to read that a couple who lost a baby during a difficult birth in 2016 have just been awarded £2.8m, with a further £0.7m said to be going to the lawyers.

This loss was, we are told avoidable, the result of errors in care at a Nottingham hospital trust. No doubt there were errors and I dare say the trust handled the matter badly after the event, but awarding the couple a large sum of money in consequence does not seem right to me: it is not as if they have the care of a handicapped child for life, or anything of that sort - although we are told of the trauma of the stillbirth itself and then what came after that costing them both their careers and their previously large incomes. 

Perhaps it is fair that there should be compensation for this last, but I don't like the amount of it. Not least because the trust in question will now have £3.5m less than it might otherwise have had to keep the people of Nottingham in good health. Possibly softened by prior conversion into professional liability insurance premiums - which just changes the route by which the taxpayer pays.

Maybe the couple will do the decent thing and give most if not all of it to a suitable charity. More imaginatively, they could give it back to the trust itself in some suitably heart warming ceremony involving handing over a large old-style cheque.

References

Reference 1: Stillborn baby’s parents receive £2.8m from Nottingham hospital trust: Payout to Jack and Sarah Hawkins is thought to be largest settlement for a stillbirth clinical negligence case - Jessica Murray, Guardian - 2021.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/reflexive-fines.html. There is some read across here.